Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="D'karr" data-source="post: 6176313" data-attributes="member: 336">I would look at a movie like 300 for inspiration of how combat pacing works well.  You might also want to modify the conditions for Opportunity Attacks against the players for movement.  Nothing bogs these things more than going back and forth about provoking an OA.Before you start you might want to look at the tools at hand and see what the pros and cons are for each one.  If you use minions you will have to roll for each one individually, but they die easily.  If you use swarms/mobs you will have to roll less but they take a lot more time to defeat, and can be frustrating to attack because of their "half damage" from melee and ranged attacks.So if I was to do this I'd use swarms but I'd decrease their hit points.  Either don't make them the same level (use lower level (1-3)), or manually use their bloodied value as starting HP.  When they reach the new bloodied value they can either become a few minions, or be entirely routed.If you run it as a skill challenge decide ahead of time what kind of complications occur when the PCs fail a roll, and what happens if they fail the challenge entirely.  Keep the handling as abstract as possible, movement does not have to follow counting squares.  Have lots of description from the players and the GM side.  You don't want something like this to turn into simply attack declarations and rolling dice.  Make it descriptive not mechanical.   Make it exciting.  Imagine the PCs escaping from the Mines of Moria with a horde of goblins chasing them out, or fighting an orc horde at Helm's Deep.  Use that type of tempo/pacing.Best of luck with this, I love these type of creative encounters.</blockquote>

Verification